


Backup

by NervousAsexual



Series: The Right Man in the Wrong Place [3]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Civil Protection, Hopeful Ending, M/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23617468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: It's been weeks since Gordon and Alyx disappeared from Nova Prospekt, and Barney is trying his best not to fall apart.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Alyx Vance, Barney Calhoun & Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun & Isaac Kleiner, Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Series: The Right Man in the Wrong Place [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559494
Comments: 5
Kudos: 114





	Backup

I don't know when I knew he and Alyx weren't coming back. Was it when Kleiner told me about Nova Prospekt? Was it two days later, when I asked him and he said no, they hadn't arrived? He'd immediately changed the subject, and he's not great with subtlety, so it wasn't hard to read between the lines.

I don't know. I just know that there wasn't time to worry about it. Whatever else had happened in Nova Prospekt, the two of them had kicked off the uprising big time.

All of a sudden it was all hands on deck for CP. I figure that's why nobody said anything when I got back after a week of laying on the mattress in Kleiner's lab. Nobody asked for my security clearance and I didn't recognize a single cop as one who'd been there when I got stunsticked. Guess they figured they needed anybody willing to wear the armor.

Worked out well enough for me, but you'd have thought even then they would have screened who they were giving security codes to a little better.

Kind of ironic--after what had happened when I got Gordon sprung from the Nova Prospekt express it was actually easier to get info to the rebels. Yeah, all the Combine data feeds were being cut down and monitored, but nobody was stopping me from walking down the block after hours and dropping a bag full of zip drives in one of the old mailboxes.

I tried not to think about Gordon or Alyx. Hadn't he gone missing before? For twenty-some years nobody knew where he was and somehow he turned up right when we needed him more than ever. I'd send Kleiner data during the few off hours I had and told myself that he'd be back, that I just needed to be patient and someday he'd be back.

Truth was, it was becoming pretty damn obvious that I wasn't gonna be here in another twenty years.

I stuck around a long time, did even more awful things to keep my cover, and then eventually I just couldn't take it anymore. I was supposed to be doing backup for a squad as it cleared one of the apartment blocks. It was late. Everybody--CP, civilian, didn't matter--we were all tired, tired and scared and hungry. Even though I wasn't up-to-date on all the rebellion cells I knew there wasn't a single rebel in that building. We all knew that. But we did what we were told, I did what I was told, right up until I didn't.

It was a girl, standing in the scrubby grass outside the building. Except she wasn't a girl, not really. She was a young woman. She could have been Alyx except for the jumpsuit and the natural hair. I guess she must have been tired of all this too because when the guy I was with told her to get on her knees she didn't and when he went after her with the stunstick she got it away from him. He turned around and looked at me. I was the backup. I was the one who should have had his back. I was the one who was supposed to put a bullet through that young woman's head.

I couldn't do it. 

She was just like Alyx, like the little girl I'd carried away from Black Mesa when Eli couldn't carry her anymore, and I raised my gun and shot that cop in the throat.

I don't know what she must have been thinking, watching one cop shoot another and then hand her the stunstick and tell her in that distorted voice to run. She did, and I checked my clip and went back into that building and killed every metrocop in the place. Two in the front hall, coming to see what was happening. Another in the stairwell. Another on the second floor.

By then all hell broke loose and there were civilians jumping out windows, running for the stairs, kneeling on the floor waiting for CP to do whatever they wanted. Another pair of cops came down the stairs and I took one of them down but it took the whole clip, and while I was reloading one of them came down the back stairs and shot me in the shoulder.

I didn't know what happened at first. I shot the one coming up from behind and the armor stuck me with the healing fluid, and that hurt more than the bullet. Now the one coming down the front stairs was near enough that he wouldn't miss so I closed the distance and fought him for the gun. It wasn't the close-quarters combat we were meant to have trained for. Whatever it took I was getting that gun away from him.

He tried to slam my head into the wall but I wasn't some civilian. I was in the same armor he was. He tried to bring the gun around and I threw my whole weight onto his arm and for a moment both of our gloved fingers were jammed into the trigger and we emptied the entire clip into the wall and in the rain of plaster and gunshot residue I let him have the damn gun and I got my own stunstick and I didn't even power it up.

By the time I was done I was done. I was still shaking from the adrenaline but I couldn't lift my arms, so I slid down onto the ground and thought about Gordon and Alyx out there somewhere and how I would never see them again and how there was no going back to CP, not now. I couldn't catch my breath. Inside that mask it felt like a panic attack coming on.

Some of the civilians were starting to come a little closer, looking at all the bodies like backup wasn't already on its way. Somebody had to get them out of there. Somebody had to risk it, and why shouldn't it be me?

I took off the armor faceplate and took a deep, deep breath of the open air, and I never looked back.

After that it all kinda runs together. I got as many folks out as I could, and took them to a safehouse, I guess, hell, I don't know. Then there was fighting. I went straight for the front line since I still had my CP security codes. A lot of people died. For some reason I wasn't one of them.

Then suddenly we were ahead of the main body of rebels. I don't remember how it happened, just that suddenly it was just the dozen or so new recruits and I pinned down against one of the smart barriers and it was looking grim.

I thought, as long as we're goners, might as well go out in a blaze of glory, right? We were blocks away from the Citadel. If we kept hugging the barrier and got somebody to take a little of the fire off we could cut through one of the buildings and maybe get our shot at breaking Eli out. And if we couldn't get to him, we could give the Combine hell from the inside.

We needed contact with one of the other groups. One of the rebels was carrying old video equipment and between those of us who were left we just managed to jury-rig a functional connection.

I tried to think of the frequency I needed to get through. There was still gunfire all around us and one of the rebels took a hit in the back and I couldn't remember... Black Mesa East? No, we'd lost that outpost ages ago. But I couldn't remember the frequency for White Forest and nobody I asked knew either--they were all too fresh to the fight. Most of them had been civilians right up until Gordon and Alyx did their thing at Nova Prospekt and then disappeared.

There was only one frequency that came to mind, the one I used to call every couple of days. All I could do was wait and hope Kleiner was out there, able to respond.

It connected--the call did, that is, and suddenly I could see in the monitor the three feet of space between Kleiner's cameras and the point where the viewscreen got murky. I got this weird lump in my throat, like maybe if he were there it would mean something and all of this would have been worth it.

Or maybe it meant the arrhythmia was back. Hell, I don't know.

"Doc," I begged the screen. "Come in. Are you there?" He didn't answer. Maybe he was out of hearing range, I thought. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he was gone up in smoke like Gordon and Alyx. "Hey! Doc! Are you there?" Maybe this had been a losing battle all along and we never stood any real chance against the Combine. Maybe the last twenty years of resistance had been a waste of time.

Then this familiar shape came out of the darkness and there he was, looking up at me.

"Yes, Barney," he said, like I was that little girl writing to the newspaper in the Christmas movies. Yes, Barney, there is a chance. "And I'm no longer alone."

Two more shapes followed him out and I didn't make the connection right away. Who was in the lab with him? Was he in danger, was there anything I could do?

And then I realized. Even on a screen no wider than my hand, flat in black and white, I recognized the angles and planes of the HEV suit and there he was.

I just about cried. Thought for sure I would, at least in that endless moment when I looked into Gordon's eyes from miles away and felt the lump in my throat swell. I knew it was my heart. It couldn't be Gordon and not be my heart. He stood there with Alyx at his side and she gave this little wave like she used to do as a kid, and Gordon didn't sign anything but he raised his hands in front of his chest with his fingertips together to make a heart and I thought I would fall apart right there.

"Alyx and Gordon are here," Kleiner said. He must've been really damn oblivious because how could he miss that I could so clearly see?

"Well, man," I said, or I think I said. I don't know. I wasn't really firing on all cylinders at the moment. "That's good news. I almost gave you guys up for lost."

Don't know what was said after that. Must've told them about the Citadel, the plan we'd thrown together at the last minute. I don't think I took my eyes off Gordon the whole time. Alyx said she'd stay with Kleiner, get him evacuated, and Gordon and that bot of hers would come out to help me. I don't know. I looked at him and he looked at me like nothing had changed and there was so much I wanted to say to him but they were still firing on us and I heard the whistle of a drone incoming. The others were still just standing there firing away and I yelled at them to get down and they did, just as the drone hit the barrier behind us and came down in pieces. I should have been looking after them but I was afraid that the video had gone dead and Gordon and Kleiner and Alyx would think that we were dead. I pulled it straight and there they were still.

"Go on," I told them. "Get going!"

I looked at Gordon and he looked at me and the both of us knew we were both alive, but there wasn't enough time to say anything else. I turned off the video. If I looked at him any longer I absolutely would have cried.

When I got back to the others the youngest, this kid with long hair and bright eyes and a cut on the forehead where a piece of that drone had hit her, said to me, "We're going to die, aren't we, Mr. Calhoun?" She had every right to think that. We couldn't hold out forever on our own. But we weren't going to be alone much longer, were we? We were going to see Anticitizen One. I was going to see Gordon again.

"Not yet," I told her. "Not yet."


End file.
